TABLOID HELL – JULY 31 2001

And Justin responds by calling her ‘Pinky’. The pair showed up at a charity basketball game in Las Vegas, organised by *NSYNC, and wore shirts with their pet names emblazoned on the back. That is pet names for each other rather than names of their pets. Though it could be the names of their pets. Though if it were, the pair would be encouraging and promoting bestiality which is illegal and wrong. Except in the Lebanon. And probably other places. All Red Tops today (July 31) carry the pictures (of Brit and Just, rather than animal sex), but The Star catches the mood of the nation in its leader column saying “Britney Spears wowed the world yesterday by showing off her basketball prowess.” Isn’t that lovely.

Meanwhile, though she once lived in a huge basketball shoe owned by a former boyfriend, the Incredible Shrinking Woman With The Incredible Shrinking Career wasn’t at the game. Instead she was taking her dog Harry for a walk. Several red tops carry a picture of Harry pausing behind Geri fouling London’s footpaths. Harry is a Shih Tzu dog, pronounced ‘shih tzu’. More interestingly the Incredible Shrinking Woman With The Incredible Shrinking Career now also has an Incredible Shrinking Age. Yesterday, in at least two papers, Geri was 30. Today, in the Star she is 28. By the time of her next single release she hopes to be seven years old and pick up sales from grannies big on the ‘AHHHH’ factor. She will continue her regression until the single after that when she will appear as courtesan in the reign of Louis XIV, as she of course was in a previous life, and pick up sales on the back of the ‘Holy God, she’s been dead for well over 200 years’ factor.

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Finally, there is life out there. There really is. All papers today carry details of scientists’ discovery that clumps of microbes floating around 25 miles up into space have fallen from the great beyond. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told a conference in California that: “A prima facie case for a space incidence of bacteria on the Earth may have been established.” It is “the first positive identification of extraterrestrial microbial life” said Cardiff University, where he is based.

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